Financial Times Interview With Bill Gates

Wide-ranging interview with Gates by Richard Waters:

“Innovation is a good thing. The human condition — put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes — is improving because of innovation,” he says. But while ­“technology’s amazing, it doesn’t get down to the people most in need in anything near the timeframe we should want it to”.

It was an argument he says he made to Thomas Friedman as The New York Times columnist was writing his 2005 book, The World is Flat, a work that came to define the almost end-of-history optimism that accompanied the entry of China and India into the global labour markets, a transition aided by the internet revolution. “Fine, go to those Bangalore Infosys centres, but just for the hell of it go three miles aside and go look at the guy living with no toilet, no running water,” Gates says now. “The world is not flat and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.”

Also:

Gates fends off questions about Microsoft, though he says — contrary to persistent speculation — that he is not about to step back in to run it as Steve Jobs once returned to revive Apple. He also admits that the company is taking up a much bigger slice of his time than the one day a week to which he signed up after he left. As chairman and a member of the committee searching for a replacement to Steve Ballmer as chief executive, Gates says he still holds regular meetings with some of the company’s product groups and that he expects to spend considerable time working with the next boss after an appointment is made.

★ Tuesday, 5 November 2013